The Baltimore Chapter is honored to have been selected as the 2005 Most Innovative Chapter. We are especially proud that this recognition comes in our first year of existence. The Baltimore Chapter, officially founded in the Fall of 2004, was organized by a remarkably energetic and dedicated group of photonics professionals from the military and commercial industry sectors as well as academia. The initial calls for membership and involvement were met with great enthusiasm and that energy has carried over into our second year. The chapter activities consist primarily of monthly technical meetings with lectures on current technical topics as well as a number of education outreach activities. Lecture themes have been intentionally designed to encompass a wide variety of topics with speakers drawn from our membership and their extensive connections.
The monthly technical meetings, organized into a Fall and Spring Technical Seminar Series, are well-attended events designed to educate, stimulate and provide an excellent medium for discussion and networking. The technical meetings typically begin with a light dinner/social hour followed by a review of current Chapter activities and culminating in the featured technical lecture. The events are held in the evenings at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory which provides the appropriate facilities for both the featured lecture and dining. This arrangement encourages a familiarity among the attendees which stimulates the Chapter dynamics. One of our more popular technical meetings was co-sponsored by a local commercial entity and included a formal dinner and a small technical show along with the technical lecture. Due to the popularity of the event, this configuration will become an annual event for the Chapter. Event attendance averages 34 professionals and topics have ranged from photonics in military systems to commercial telecommunications devices and systems to future quantum computing systems.
Without a doubt, the “innovation” of our chapter is best exemplified by our educational outreach efforts. The Baltimore-Washington region, served by the Washington DC/Northern Virginia Chapter as well as the Baltimore Chapter of LEOS, has a rich collection of five nationally ranked universities and a large number of smaller universities and four-year colleges. Two educational outreach programs were started in 2005 targeting both types of institutional groups in order to foster industry-academia interaction. The Graduate student poster competition was targeted towards the larger Universities and was enthusiastically received. Sixteen submissions were presented, mainly from doctoral candidates. Submitted posters included a wide variety of topics in optical devices, systems, and networks, covering the electromagnetic spectrum from microwaves to the far infrared. An independent panel of 5 judges evaluated the posters based upon the presented technical information with an emphasis on technical achievement and presentation clarity. This year, the competition resulted in a first-place tie, with both posters being granted a cash award and certificate. The event was well attended by professionals from the local universities, commercial companies, Government and defense contractors, and military research facilities. The joint sponsorship by the Washington DC/Northern Virginia chapter contributed greatly to the success of this event, and our goal is to co-host this poster competition every year.
An undergraduate student outreach program was targeted towards smaller Universities and Colleges, many of which do not have established optics curriculum and research. The intent of this program is to team a LEOS volunteer with an undergraduate student and a faculty co-advisor to jointly explore a project related to optics. We received tremendous interest from local department chairs and college administrators who actively participated in providing input to the program and shaping its final form. The program was instituted with flexible guidelines to allow customization in suiting the individual needs of the colleges. For instance, the Loyola College Physics Department was facing challenges in student retention as a high percentage of students were leaving Physics during their junior year, transferring to other departments within Loyola. Under the advice of the Physics chair, we tailored the program to reach out to sophomores and provide a more hands-on laboratory experience. This program was initiated in May 2005. The Engineering Department at Loyola College, on the other hand, was interested in increasing the practical content of their senior year team projects. We currently have a LEOS mentor jointly exploring whether a small group of seniors would be interested in a free space optical communication project or a project that builds efficient optical collectors for solar energy conversion. We are also engaged with Morgan State University, collecting input from their faculty and administrators, with the intent to start a similar program in the near future. Our experience with undergraduate student outreach highlights the following:
• Smaller colleges and universities are most interested in tapping the industrial expertise that LEOS mentors bring in,
• Availability of small amounts of funds ($500 per project) can have a big impact on the choice of project topic and the quality and depth of its implementation.
During 2006, we intend to expand our program to pre-college students as well, perhaps collaborating with other local organizations and chapters with established connections to local-area K12 schools. We have initiated exchanges with the Hands on Optics group at University of Maryland-Baltimore County and the IEEE Baltimore chapter Women In Engineering group, and are optimistic in making more progress in K12 outreach during this second year.
The Baltimore LEOS Chapter is hopeful that the lessons learned, groundwork laid and talent and energy harnessed during this first year will allow us to become an even more effective member of the Baltimore technical community, both professional and pre-professional, and the larger international technical community represented by LEOS and IEEE. As with our own chapter membership, we encourage visiting our chapter web site for information on our past and future activities at www.ieee.org/BaltimoreLEOS and any questions or feedback be sent to our chapter officers through the email alias Baltimore.LEOS@ieee.org.